ATT: Skittles
by hotchityhotchhotch
Summary: Oneshot tie-in to All This Time. Companion fic to All This Time: All Women's Problems Begin with Men. Summary is inside to avoid spoiling those who haven't read/finished ATT. COMPLETE.


**Summary:** Companion fic to _All This Time: All Women's Problems Begin with Men_. Charlotte and Emily are at home while Hotch and Sean take all the boys out camping. This would be the camping portion. It's full of boys. And a dog. You might be grossed out at times. But there's also plenty of fluff.

**Age Guide: Hotch: 57; Emily: 52; Sean: 42; Jack: 17; Henry: 14; Charlotte: 12; Ryan & Ben: 10**

**NOTE: To get the Skittles reference, you may want to reread Chapter 91 of All This Time. Skittles are also mentioned in Chapters 94 and 101, but 91 should remind you well enough.  
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**July 2023**

**Day 1**

"Nice," Hotch muttered when the first thing Mitch did upon getting out of the SUV was to roll around in the dirt.

"He's already gettin' into it, fantastic," Sean said, beaming. He crouched down and called the dog to him. "Man, I can't believe we've never all gone camping together before."

Hotch looked out onto the lake whose name he didn't even know. Sean had done all the planning and the driving. Hotch had spent the ride enjoying the scenery but not really paying attention to it. Ryan and Ben had sat in the back with the dog while Jack drove with Henry in Sean's car behind them. Upon stopping at Sean's for the coolers he'd prepared as well as his own belongings, they had discovered there was no way they would get the six of them, a dog, two tents, coolers, clothes, and sleeping bags all into the SUV, so they'd moved some things to Sean's car and had split up.

"Can we go swimming, Dad?" Ryan asked, yanking his duffel bag out of the back.

"Sure," Hotch said. "Just for a bit. Then you need to come help set up camp. It's not gonna just be me and your uncle."

"Can I help?" Henry asked while all three of his brothers forewent their (thankfully non-matching) swimming trunks and simply threw their shirts somewhere and took off for the still lake thirty yards away.

"You don't wanna swim? Okay, then," Sean said as he dragged one of two large tents out of the back of the SUV. "Aaron, there's no way in hell we're gonna be able to pack this all back in. We might have to call Emily to come do it for us."

"Yeah, that'll happen," Hotch said dryly. He turned to Henry. "Wanna go find some firewood we can use until someone can drive back to that gas station back a ways for more?"

"Sure," Henry said, leaving the clearing.

"Don't go too far, okay?" Hotch called after him.

"I know."

"Where's the fire pit, anyway?" Hotch asked Sean.

"Wherever you wanna build it," Sean replied.

Hotch looked around him. The clearing under the trees wasn't really much of a clearing, and no marker of any sort indicated that it was a campsite. "Sean, are we even at a campground?"

Sean was bent over the first tent, unzipping the bag to get the pieces out. He didn't answer.

"Sean."

"_What_? Everywhere was booked. It's July."

"You were supposed to book us a site a month ago," Hotch griped. "When did you first try? Yesterday?"

"Three days ago, and bite me," Sean spat as he pulled an assortment of flexible poles out of the bag. "Do you still know how to pitch a tent, old-timer?" he cracked.

"Don't you think you're a little old to be such a smartass?" Hotch asked.

Sean raised his arms out to his sides. "Hey, I gave up on relationships. Not lookin' to impress anyone."

"I still—"

"Don't start on me on the relationship thing, Aaron. Tell me how I'm supposed to come back from what she did to me."

"It's been years," Hotch told his brother. He opened the flap on the bag of tent pieces and gave the instructions a brief glance, then decided he didn't need them. He'd just put the tents together in the backyard the other night to air them out, so he hope he would remember on his own for the most part.

"And it still hurts like hell. I'm perfectly happy being single. No one to worry about but myself."

Mitch came around the front of the SUV with his nose to the ground. Hotch hadn't even noticed he'd gone away. They had long ago trained him to the point where he didn't need a leash. He never went far. "You could at least get a dog."

"But you've got a perfectly good dog that _you_ feed and clean up after and I can hang with him whenever I want. Why would I want my own?"

"Whatever you say. Are we going to get in trouble for camping here? Where exactly are we?"

"Relax, I've got it under control. My college buddies and I would camp here practically all summer long. Doesn't look like anyone else has used it the twenty years since, but hey, it's safe. We've got the lake right there so the boys can swim and we can fish and whoever's too wimpy to go the whole week without bathing can at least wash their hair. I brought ten-dollar_ environmentally friendly_ shampoo for the cowardly. Anything we need electricity for either has batteries or can be plugged into one of the cars. So would you just relax?"

"Dad, how's this?" Henry asked, coming out of the thick of the trees with some dead branches.

"That's good, man, but we need more than that, and it's gotta be a little drier," Sean answered for Hotch. He clapped Henry on the shoulder and led him into the woods to show him what they needed. Hotch had the frame of one tent set up by the time they got back, each with an armful of acceptable firewood.

"We need a bunch of rocks, too," Hotch said. "Henry, why don't you go down to the lake and bring us the biggest rocks you can find?"

"Aaron, he's a kid. Let him go run around."

"He wanted to help, didn't you, buddy?"

"Yup," Henry said eagerly. He peered over his shoulders at his brothers for a moment but didn't seen too interested in the horsing around that was going on. Jack was chest-deep in the lake, picking up Ben and throwing him over his shoulder into the water.

"Can you find some rocks, then?" Hotch repeated. "To circle off a firepit?" Henry nodded dutifully and took off for the shore at a jog.

"He okay?" Sean asked as soon as Henry was out of earshot.

"Not sure," Hotch said. Typically, Henry got along just fine with the rest of the children, Jack especially. Hotch wondered if Henry had had a spat with anyone. Out of the four boys, he was the easiest to send off hiding for a few hours with a mean comment. Hotch attributed Henry's sensitivity to the fact that he'd spent so much of his childhood being coddled by Emily. The two of them had never really grown out of that relationship.

"Think he misses Emily already?" Sean pondered.

Hotch shook his head and laughed a little. "I don't think he's _that_ bad. But you never know."

**Day 2**

All four boys came rolling back to the campsite in Sean's car (going without an adult in such an unfamiliar area had been against Hotch's better judgment) and each hauled out two bags of ice, which were to replace mostly water in all of their coolers. As soon as Ryan set his ice down, he took his phone out of his pocket and walked behind the SUV, but Hotch caught him.

"Give me the phone, Ryan. I don't want to have this conversation five more times," Hotch pleaded. "How your emergency-only cell phone got a text messaging plan is something I'll definitely be bringing up with your mom. C'mon. Cough it up. Again. And stop sneaking through my stuff."

Ryan sighed dramatically and ambled out of his hiding place, flopping his arm out in front of him and giving up his phone.

"Who do you keep texting, anyway?" Hotch asked, pocketing the phone and, for now, respecting Ryan enough to let him answer instead of looking through the phone's messages.

"His _girlfriend_," Jack said with a little snicker.

"Plural," Henry added.

"Excuse me?" Hotch said.

"Shut up," Ryan spat at Ben. "I don't have a girlfriend."

"Good answer," Hotch said firmly. "If I catch you with this again on this trip, it's getting taken away for good."

"Wow, _this_ is a fun trip," Ryan huffed.

"Stop being such a baby, Ryan," Jack said, rolling his eyes.

"Hey, simmer down now," Sean said, holding up a pair of calming hands.

"We're bored," Ben whined.

"Bored?" Sean asked incredulously. "You've got a giant lake to swim and fish in. Woods to run around in. Each other to chase around. What more do you need?"

"Air conditioning," Ben answered.

Hotch and Sean shared exasperated stares. Sean stepped over to Hotch and whispered something in his ear while the three younger boys watched them, hoping their uncle was proposing to their father that they call the whole thing off. Jack dug into one of the coolers to make himself a sandwich.

"Yeah, I think we can do that," Hotch answered Sean. "But no real money. We can bet food or something."

"What're we betting on?" Ryan asked with renewed enthusiasm.

"You boys are gonna learn how to play some poker," Sean said with a proud smile. "Drag all the coolers over here so we can have a table." Jack, Ryan, and Ben heeded their uncle's orders, but Henry wandered off to the tent he shared with Jack and Hotch. Hotch realized Henry hadn't taken part in the exchange at all.

"Henry? You don't wanna play, buddy?" Hotch asked.

"Not right now. I'm tired."

**Day 3**

"Nine," Ryan said when Sean let out a belch that made even Hotch chuckle despite his distaste for Sean's ongoing bodily function contest with the boys. Their smiling faces were lit only by the fire around which they sat.

"Nuh-uh, eight," Ben argued. "I'll give you a nine."

"Why not aim for a ten?" Jack asked.

"Didn't you hear? A ten's when you throw something up at the end," Ben said. He took a long drink of his root beer and took a deep breath, letting out a burp much louder than his uncle's.

"You next, Dad," Jack said.

"Nah, I think I'm good," Hotch said with a sly smile.

"Hey Dad?" Ryan asked.

"I'm not farting, either," Hotch said, answering what he thought would be Ryan's question.

Everyone laughed. "No, I was gonna ask you something else," Ryan said.

"Go for it." Hotch leaned forward and put his hands on his knees.

"What's a blowjob?"

Ben looked at his father with equal curiosity while Sean, Jack, and Henry immediately stared up into the trees, trying not to laugh.

Hotch grew immediately cross. "_Sean_—"

"Hey, he did _not_ hear that from me. You let one kid see a _Penthouse_ and you never hear the end of it. God," Sean groaned.

"Where did you hear about this, then?" Hotch asked Ryan.

"School," Ryan said, shrugging. "What's the big deal? What is it?"

"You're too young to know. All of you are. Including you, Sean," Hotch added.

"Yet I've still managed to get them," Sean said with an airy sigh.

"_What is it_?" the twins pleaded to know.

"It's when someone—"

"Jack," Hotch cut his eldest son off. "This is not a discussion for you to be a part of. I don't even want to know where _you_ found out." Ryan flew from his chair to hide behind the SUV again. Hotch figured he was going to relieve himself and didn't think anything of it.

"I found out what it is! A guy lets someone…_Eww_! Why would anyone do that?" Ryan shouted a few moments later, his mouth hanging open in disgust when he came back into everyone else's view, his phone aglow in front of his face.

"Again with the phone," Hotch grumbled. "Give it here. You're done. It's going in the garbage."

**Day 4**

Sean, Jack, and the twins could be heard enjoying a midnight swim. Henry had joined in at first, but soon came back up to sit at the fire instead. Hotch sat there as well, his feet propped up on another chair while he strained his eyes to read a book in the firelight. "Hey there, buddy," he said with a concerned smile. "No swimming?"

"I'm tired," Henry mumbled. His attitude hadn't improved much over the last few days, but so far, Hotch hadn't been able to get a good moment alone with him. Now they had the time for a chat.

"You've seemed pretty down the past few days," Hotch said, putting down his book and his feet. Henry took the chair next to him and ruffled his nearly white hair with his towel. "What's the matter?"

"Why did you and Mom have Ben and Ryan?" Henry asked without any further prodding from Hotch.

Variations of this matter had sprung up a few times before, but apparently, something or someone had undone all of Hotch and Emily's hard work toward assuring the children that they were all equally loved. "Because we were crazy and wanted more of you," Hotch quipped. His canned response had worked before.

"But why? Whenever Ben and Ryan aren't behaving you joke about how you wish you'd stopped at three. Why _did_ you want five kids?"

"Well," Hotch said, clearing his throat, "we _wanted_ four and we were _blessed_ with five."

"Stop it," Henry moaned.

"Stop what?"

"Stop lying. Nobody wants that many kids. You and Mom wanted kids that were _yours_, didn't you?"

Hotch immediately wondered how honestly he should answer that question. He couldn't keep him waiting too long, though—Henry was staring right at him.

Hotch had been convinced, when he and Emily had debated whether to have a child together, that her concerns were silly, that they would never even seem to have favorites and that the kids would someday know the difference but wouldn't care. How sorely mistaken he had been. "Well…in a way, yeah. A lot of people who fall in love want to have children together."

"So biological kids are better than adopted ones?"

"That's not what I mean at all," Hotch said as his stomach twisted and his heart raced. "Mom and I love you all equally. Do we not…show you that?"

Henry shrugged and collapsed back into his chair. "I'm the only one here without the last name Hotchner. Even _Mitch_ is a Hotchner."

"A LaMontagne-Hotchner-Prentiss," Hotch corrected.

"Still…"

Hotch chuckled. "Want to know a secret?"

Henry immediately perked up a little and nodded.

"I'll get to Mitch's last names in a minute. But that kind of starts with before Mom and I even decided to have a baby together."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Hotch said, "at first, Mom didn't want to have a baby. She _did_ in the sense that she wanted another child, and she wanted to be pregnant and give birth and…have that experience which you can't fully understand unless you're a woman." Hotch coughed. "Trust me, I tried…"

"So she didn't want a baby?"

"In a way, yeah. She told me she was afraid that you and Charlie would feel like you weren't loved as much as a child we might have together—and she even thought Jack might feel that way, since she's not _his_ biological mother, either. That's what kept her from wanting a baby originally."

"How come she changed her mind?"

Hotch figured that "It just clicked" wouldn't suffice for Henry. He was too old and too smart for that. So Hotch told the truth. "Well, one time, we thought we were pregnant, and it turned out Mom was really happy. She realized her fears weren't really valid—that she couldn't possibly love anyone more than she already loved you three, so she couldn't possibly act that way, either. When we found out we weren't pregnant after all, we decided to try. It just took her finding out what it felt like to think she was going to be a biological mother for her to realize that it was a little different from being an adoptive mother, yes, but not superior."

"Really?"

Hotch nodded. "_And_ when we got married, you know why she didn't change her last name?"

"Because Prentiss sounds more sophisticated than Hotchner?" Henry said, repeating Emily's reply for every time she was asked that question.

"No," Hotch said with a soft laugh, "because she never wanted you and Charlie to feel like you were the odd ones out just because you had a different last name. So she kept hers instead of taking mine. And then Ben and Ryan got hyphenated last names to keep things even a little more mixed up."

"This is all because Mom never wanted me and Charlie to think you guys didn't love us as much as you love Jack and Ben and Ryan?"

"You got it," Hotch said, placing a hand on Henry's back. "We don't differentiate. I promise you that. Of course we know where all five of you came from, but it doesn't matter to us at all."

"Promise?" Henry said.

Hotch smirked and pulled a nearby cooler closer to them. "I promise. Poker?"

"With just two of us?"

"Sure. It's called Heads Up. You probably won't get a good hand, though, so it's all about bluffing. You remember bluffing, right?"

Henry nodded and turned his chair while Hotch searched around for a deck of cards.

"We can play for Doritos," Hotch said, grabbing an open bag from someone's chair.

"Cool. Hey Dad?"

"Yeah, buddy."

"Is that why Mitch has three last names? To...keep things mixed up?"

Hotch smiled. "That is exactly why."

"Can I ask one more question?"

"You can ask as many as you want."

"You know how Jack has your eyes, and Ben has your hair and Mom's nose, and Ryan has your ears and Mom's chin? What about me?"

Hotch's eyes glinted in the firelight as he smiled and shuffled the cards. "You have your mother's hair and your father's eyes."

"Really?"

"Really."

"But…what about my…_mom _and_ dad_? I obviously don't look like you guys," Henry asked.

Hotch thought for a long moment. "You have your mom's heart and your dad's sense of humor."

"But Aunt Jessie says you don't have a sense of humor."

**Day 5**

"Dad, the tent's leaking," Jack said. He had just woken up.

Hotch cracked his eyes open to the dawn that barely lit their tent through the rainclouds. "What're you talking about? Where?"

"Right on my forehead. It's like Chinese water torture. It's actually kinda cool."

"Ugh, Dad…" Henry moaned. "Why are my feet all wet?"

"Because they're touching the side of the tent and it's sprinkling. I forgot the rain flies. Just move in a little and stop touching the sides," Hotch said, rolling onto his stomach and trying to get back to sleep.

"Okay, now it's really leaking," Henry said. "I'm going to the other tent. See ya." When he slipped on his sandals and hurried to the tent that the twins and Sean were sharing with the dog, he heard them snickering inside. "What's going on?" he asked when he unzipped the flap and let himself in.

"Shh," Sean said, gesturing for Henry to come closer. "I hid the rain flies for the tents."

"Dad said he forgot to pack them," Henry said.

"That's what I convinced him happened," Sean said. Henry saw Ryan point straight up, then saw that this tent had something over the top. Henry stuck his head back outside and saw the rain fly over this tent, which was keeping it perfectly dry, while the other tent remained exposed to the light drizzle that began to pick up just then. He laughed and found a spot on the end of Ben's sleeping bag to sit on after zipping the flap shut. "Hey, wait, how'd you know when it was gonna rain so you knew when to put yours up?"

Sean shushed his nephew again and pulled his phone out from inside his pillowcase.

**Day 6**

"Oh my goodness, did you have a contest on who could go the longest without cleaning themselves in any way, shape, or form?" Emily asked, hiding behind her hands after Hotch kissed her hello in the driveway.

"Yeah!" Ben shouted. "Jack and Dad tied!"

"You even beat your _brother_?" Emily asked Hotch, repulsed.

"I heard that," Sean called from behind the SUV.

"You never even mow your lawn, Sean. It's a completely valid question," Emily shot back.

"Damn straight I don't mow my lawn," Sean said, laughing darkly.

"Gross," Henry muttered, catching the innuendo.

"Tell me about it," Emily said to Henry. "And hey, you. Come give me a hug."

Henry hadn't outgrown Emily's hugs yet. "Hi, Mom."

"Ohhh, I missed you," Emily said as she held him tight and put up with the smell.

"I missed you, too."

"Did you have a good time?" she asked.

Henry looked over to Hotch, who gave him a wink and headed for the front door. "Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I caught a fish that was two feet long and Uncle Sean cut his finger trying to get it off the hook, and he cried a little."

Emily snickered, looking in Sean's general direction, but he was gone. She spotted him halfway through the front door, where Charlotte rushed out to greet her dad with a hug, not caring what he smelled like. "Hey!" Emily shouted to everyone. "Six stinky people and three showers means three of you are not going inside yet. Go hose off out back." Mitch barked and wagged his tail happily at the end of the driveway. "Go ahead inside, honey," she said to Henry. "Just…don't sit on the couch or on any furniture with upholstery, okay?"

"'Kay."

Mitch ran up to Emily, sensing that he would now get a proper amount of attention. "Hey there, Skittles," she cooed, crouching down to scratch his ears. She had never explained the Skittles principle to Hotch, and even though Garcia had come up with it in the first place, Emily still only used her nickname for the dog when absolutely no one else was around. He licked her chin and she cringed, but then laughed. "You know what? For once, you are the least smelly of all the boys I know."

**A/N: Please leave a review!**

**Random thought – whenever I write these stories so far into the future, I can't help but wonder how different technology will be. Hmmm. Maybe people will have phones embedded in their skin (that technology is already available) or maybe the family will own a hovercraft. **


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